I thought Stevens was a good Gregor, though obviously not one with a hell of a lot of material to work with. Interested to see what Whyte will bring to the role, which should be a little beefier this year.

Unless an alternate dimesnion Ned Stark from a modernized, urban version of Westeros is going to show up in season two and start fondling his secretary on the Iron Thorne, in which case I apologize for spoiling everyone.

Unless an alternate dimesnion Ned Stark from a modernized, urban version of Westeros is going to show up in season two and start fondling his secretary on the Iron Thorne, in which case I apologize for spoiling everyone.

Martin also never described why the seasons in this world are of random length. When people ask him what is the reason for that, he says "Magic".

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That's a shame. As a space nerd, I always hoped their would be a future chapter with just brief discussions of the planet's rotation to the sun and how some variable would cause the drastic changes in seasons and season length.

I always thought with the red comet stuff that Martin might get just a little more spacey in his novels to explain the weather.

*I also want a scene in the tv show where it's from space showing the planet with winter brewing and moving in the land.

There is no variable we know of that could cause the seasons to change the way they do in Westeros. Thousands of nerds have spent thousands of man-hours trying to model a system wherein it makes sense and nothing works without the addition of "God did it" or Magic.

That's a shame. As a space nerd, I always hoped their would be a future chapter with just brief discussions of the planet's rotation to the sun and how some variable would cause the drastic changes in seasons and season length.

Click to expand...

That would be pretty cool in a science fiction novel, and indeed, was pretty cool in The Planet of Exile, an Ursula Le Guin novel on a world with long summers and long winters and how that affects it culturally (and how the vaguely medieval-era people of the world must prepare for northern invaders).

But Ice and Fire has hints running all throughout it that a lot of the thematic stuff may be literally connected, magically. I just read the first of the Dunk and Egg series of short stories, and offhandedly a character there observes that some say the summers have been shorter since the dragons died.

We have Winter, we have Ice (as in Fire and Ice), we have the walkers, we have the Old Gods, and in the other corner we have Fire, Summer, Dragons, and R'hllor. Cold has the disaster of a wintswept landscape of zombie men, hot has the disaster of the Doom of Valyria, a burning cauldron of destruction. We have claims dragons bring magic to the world, or summer, or whatever, there's clearlly a lot of vaguely Mancihean dualism screwing around here and I'm sure it'll make sense eventually.

That's a shame. As a space nerd, I always hoped their would be a future chapter with just brief discussions of the planet's rotation to the sun and how some variable would cause the drastic changes in seasons and season length.

Click to expand...

That would be pretty cool in a science fiction novel, and indeed, was pretty cool in The Planet of Exile, an Ursula Le Guin novel on a world with long summers and long winters and how that affects it culturally (and how the vaguely medieval-era people of the world must prepare for northern invaders).

But Ice and Fire has hints running all throughout it that a lot of the thematic stuff may be literally connected, magically. I just read the first of the Dunk and Egg series of short stories, and offhandedly a character there observes that some say the summers have been shorter since the dragons died.

We have Winter, we have Ice (as in Fire and Ice), we have the walkers, we have the Old Gods, and in the other corner we have Fire, Summer, Dragons, and R'hllor. Cold has the disaster of a wintswept landscape of zombie men, hot has the disaster of the Doom of Valyria, a burning cauldron of destruction. We have claims dragons bring magic to the world, or summer, or whatever, there's clearlly a lot of vaguely Mancihean dualism screwing around here and I'm sure it'll make sense eventually.

Click to expand...

It will all make sense because the orbit of Westeros (for lack of a better name) sometimes syncs up with the orbit of a red giant that severely reduces the amount of sun/warmth in Westoros. This causes the long winters which only happens every such and such cycle.

That crazy orbit that causes the long winters is also responsible for the dead rising and "magic" increasing in use in Westeros.

I realize this is crazy late, but ugh, Natalie Dormer? The rat-face, the Igor-eyes... Her best assets are clearly below the neck and anyone who wants to see 'em has already had their chance in the Tudors. Speaking of the Tudors, I wasn't exactly impressed with her acting there. Hopefully they'll keep her role pretty minor in the show, that casting just isn't clicking for me at all.